Daphne Bramham: Is Vancouver's Arbutus corridor worth $100 million?

Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun07.28.2014

A woman walks her dog along the Arbutus corridor near the 6th Avenue Community Garden. Canadian Pacific Railway is looking at bringing the tracks, dormant for more than a decade, back to life for the movement of freight.ian smith
/ vancouver sun

The Canadian Pacific Railway wants $100 million for the 66-foot-wide right-of-way that runs for 11 kilometres from the Fraser River almost to False Creek.Glenn Baglo
/ Vancouver Sun

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VANCOUVER -- There’s no question that the hodgepodge of gardens along CP Rail’s Arbutus corridor are charming and no doubt that homeowners prefer gardens and a leafy walkway to trains.

But are Vancouverites willing to pay $100 million for it? Because that’s how much Canadian Pacific Railway wants for the 66-foot-wide right-of-way that runs for 11 kilometres from the Fraser River almost to False Creek.

Sources familiar with the negotiations confirmed that there is an $80-million gap between what the railway wants and what the city has offered. The vast discrepancy between how the railway and the city value the land is like chalk and cheese and reflects two completely different views of the land’s value.

It’s zoned as a transportation corridor, which is how the city reached its evaluation. It’s likely that the assessment took into account the fact that four years ago, the City of Richmond bought 14.5 acres of the old interurban line from CP Rail for $5 million.

But, because the Arbutus corridor cuts through some of the most expensive residential property in Canada, CP believes it’s worth five times more than what the city has offered to pay.

It’s been 13 years since the last train ran down the line. CP has been pretty patient. After all, hosting everything from gardens to used car dealerships for no benefit doesn’t exactly fit any corporate strategy, let alone that of a company with a CEO mandated to shed costs and wasted assets in its drive to maximize shareholder profits.

CP denies that the timing of the squatter gardener evictions on July 31 is anything but coincidental. But even if it is intentional, the railway deserves at least grudging credit for cleverness.

Three-and-a-half months before a civic election, how better to get politicians’ attention than to have citizens raising the stakes by confronting city council with a petition signed by more than 4,000 people and heartwarming videos and photos of straw-hatted mothers gardening with their daughters and retirees walking the tracks?

For politicians, it’s a bit of a nightmare.

Consider how generous taxpayers may feel toward one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, a community that already has more green space than most others and where, little more than a decade ago, resident Pamela Sauder declared herself and her neighbours to be Vancouver’s “crème de la crème.”

Consider that the Vision-dominated council’s top priority is ending homelessness. This year, it allocated $16.6 million in its capital budget toward that.

Do the arithmetic. Mayor Gregor Robertson and his colleagues are being asked to spend six times that amount to preserve the Arbutus corridor.

Homes for the homeless or parks for the privileged? That’s how any agreement would likely be spun by at least a couple of Vision’s competitors.

As for CP, images of the wanton destruction of vegetable patches just before harvest or trains navigating through posh neighbourhoods are unlikely to puncture the resolve of E. Hunter Harrison. He may not be meaner than a junkyard dog, but Harrison’s not a man to back away from a fight. He came out of retirement in 2012 to turn around the worst-performing railroad on the continent and maximizing full value of existing and anticipated surplus real estate holdings was among the goals he highlighted soon after his appointment.

“When you go to a new location, in a railroad or whatever, you’ve got to find the meanest son of a bitch and whip his ass — you get a lot of attention,” Harrison told the Globe and Mail in April. He went on to say that where a big bully has always got his way, “you take care of the big bully and a lot of things come together.”

Since CP lost its court battle with the city to sell the Arbutus corridor a decade ago, it’s possible that Harrison sees Vancouver as a bully.

Under pressure, it’s not clear how much local politicians might be willing to spend in a neighbourhood where residents generally have more influence and are more inclined to vote than in others. Nor is it clear just how much taxpayers might be willing to pay or whether these privileged residents might ever willingly give up their free gardens, even for rapid-transit or bus lines.

In a utopian world, every neighbourhood would be spared the messy stuff of industry and urban life whether it’s freight trains, training trains or SkyTrains. But this is the real world where often it’s less about fairness and quality of life than it is about politics and money.

1905-1950s — Electric locomotives shuttle freight along the corridor, while passengers were transported on interurban coaches.

July 1952 — Passenger service ends.

1995 — CP severs connection between Arbutus corridor and Science World by selling a single lot at 1500 W 2nd Ave., which becomes a Starbucks.

1999 — CP discontinues the railway apart from service to Molson brewery and starts working on plans for residential and commercial development and offers to sell the corridor.

2000 — City passes an Official Development Plan that restricts development on the corridor. CP sues city for limiting its use of the property to unprofitable rail service. The company claims the bylaw amounted to taking the property without compensation. Also, some Kerrisdale residents oppose use of corridor for rapid transit.

2001 — Last train runs.

2002 — B.C. Supreme Court judge rules the bylaw was not within the city’s powers. Separately, the B.C. Court of Appeal reverts northernmost 10 acres of the unused corridor to the Squamish Nation.

2006 — Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rules that the city is within its rights to make decisions about land use and it does not need to compensate CP for any loss of value, real or perceived.

2007-2014 — Residents plant community gardens along the line and use the space for recreation and transportation.

May 2014 — CP sends letters to schools, residents and businesses along the corridor advising that since April its crews have been using brush cutters in preparation for a land survey and the running of trains along the 11 kilometres of track.

June 2014 — CP sends a notice to residents asking those with “any personal items, such as sheds or other structures, vehicles, storage containers and/or gardens, to please remove anything within the margins of CP land no later than July 31, 2014.”

July 31, 2014 — Deadline set by CP for gardeners and businesses using the Arbutus corridor to remove everything from the 66-foot-wide, right of way.

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